


We Have a Bad Feeling About This

by firecat



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Conversation in the dark, Crossover, Curses, Dungeon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Han shoots first, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, POV Han Solo, Prophecy, Trojan War, Trope Bingo Round 15, disbelief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: The Millennium Falcon deposits Han Solo on Earth during the Trojan War. He has a conversation with the cursed prophetess Cassandra.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	We Have a Bad Feeling About This

**Author's Note:**

> Set between events in _Solo: A Star Wars Story_ and _Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope._
> 
> Written for:   
> FFFC 100th Special Challenge, Table D: Fairytale/Fantasy/SciFi, prompt: (39) changing the future  
> Trope Bingo Round 15 prompt: AU Historical

“I have a bad feeling about this,” says Han.

He was still learning about the Millennium Falcon, which he had recently piloted for Calrissian, and then won on a wager. It had been downgraded and upgraded and sidegraded so much over the years through its many owners that it was anyone’s guess what it was supposed to be able to do, and no one’s guess what it might do if it were pushed to its limits in any way.

That must be why the Falcon had crash landed on a beach that was decidedly not where Han had intended to go. It must be why the navigation system had malfunctioned, insisting that this planet was nowhere in the known galaxy. And it was just Han’s luck (Murphy was his personal demon) that Chewbacca, who was much better at the navigation system than Han was, was not with Han on this run. 

Han decided the only thing for it was to get out and look.

Murphy was still riding him. Only moments after he’d exited and cloaked the ship, he was captured by human soldiers. They were wearing impractical metal armor he’d never seen before (the plumed helmets were especially outré), but they knew what they were doing. He was efficiently disarmed and thrown into a pitch dark cell. 

“I _really_ have a bad feeling about this,” repeats Han into the blackness. It’s his go-to phrase for when he feels out of his depth.

He is startled by what happened next.

“Your words are familiar to me, for I have said them myself many times,” says a voice from the dark. “But it will be all right. For you.” 

The unfamiliar voice sounds human. Probably female, probably young. It means he isn’t alone. A tiny spark of hope alights on Han. This means he has a better chance of figuring out— 

“Where am I?”

“Priam’s dungeon,” says the woman. 

“What’s Priam?”

“Not what, who. Priam is the King of Troy.”

“Never heard of…wait. Troy?” he repeats. A faint memory teases him. Stories he was told as a kid. About a galaxy far, far away. Where there was a planet called Earth. “As in Trojan War Troy?”

“The same.”

“I’ve heard of it. The war. A wooden horse was involved.”

“That hasn’t happened yet,” says the woman. “I keep trying to warn them, but they don’t listen. They never listen. If you know about it, you must be a future-seer, like me.”

“No, Princess,” Han says sarcastically. “I don’t know the future. I read about the horse in a children’s book.”

“What is a book?”

“It’s...never mind, kid. Troy? Really? But as far as I know, that’s not even in our—” Han stops. Someone in a world that’s still making its weapons and armor out of metal isn’t going to know what a galaxy is. 

“That thrice-bedamned Falcon,” he mutters. “And what do you wanna bet that if I ever _want_ to be able to jump to a different galaxy, it will sit there sucking its thumb.”

“Falcon? Are you praying to a god? I have heard the Egyptians have a Falcon god.”

“No, Falcon is the name of my…ship.”

“A ship!” she says. “The Greeks will have taken it by now.”

“I hid it. It’s…very small.” Han doesn’t want to talk about the Falcon. “Never mind that. Tell me about you, kid. Do you have a name? A story?”

“My name is Cassandra.”

The name sounds vaguely familiar to Han. Maybe she had been part of the Trojan War stories he’d read. 

“Well, Cassandra, I don’t suppose you know a way out of here?”

“Yes, I do, but there’s no point in my using it. Escape is not in my future.”

“That’s a little fatalistic, don’tcha think?” prods Han.

“Not for me.”

 _This woman is weird,_ thinks Han. But he might as well keep talking to her. “How about me, then? Can you show me the way out of this black chamber? Or at least tell me how to get some light on the subject?”

“I can’t make light. Perhaps if I’d let Apollo take what he wanted, I would have that gift, but I didn’t. The sun will rise in several hours, though, and some light will filter in.”

Han is curious about who Apollo is and what kinds of gifts he might offer or withhold. Han might be able to trade with him, if he can figure out a reliable way on and off this planet. But now, he has other things on his mind. “What I want to know is, whether the sun will come first to let us escape or the soldiers will come first to kill us.”

“Soldiers won’t come. This dungeon is for the forgotten. The mad.”

“What? I’m not crazy!” Although now that Han thinks of it, if he crash-landed on a low-tech civilization, everything he said while struggling with the soldiers who captured him would have sounded pretty nuts to them. 

“Neither am I. But it’s not our opinion that matters, is it? If enough people say we’re mad, then we might as well be.” 

“I don’t know about you, sweetheart, but I’m not willing to live in peace and harmony with stupid assumptions,” Han protests.

“You will be gone from here before the sun sets again. Although the stupid assumptions, they will continue to plague you,” she adds, with a hint of wry humor in her voice.

“You know things, do you?” says Han. _Not that ‘stupid assumptions will continue to plague you’ is the most difficult of prophecies to make,_ he thinks to himself.

“I am a future-seer, like you.”

“I’m not a future-seer. Although, it appears my ship has time-traveled as well as space-traveled. I might be a visitor from the future.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I can tell you’re also a future-seer. And cursed not to be believed, like me. Which god did you offend with your refusal?”

“What are you talking about, kid? I don’t believe in gods. And as for not being believed, gods don’t need to exist for that to happen. The only thing that needs to exist is stupidity.”

“Ah, I’ve known some such people. Who don’t believe in gods. They are fortunate. It’s harder not to believe in gods when they appear before you, wanting that which can be given only once, and won’t take no for an answer.”

“What? Are you saying some so-called god—?”

“I refused him. But then he cursed me. The gift of prophecy and the curse of never being believed.”

“Tell me who he is and I’ll show him the business end of my bl— uh, weapon,” promises Han. Not that he actually had the blaster. The soldiers had taken it. Fortunately it was coded to his thumbprint. Otherwise he didn’t want to think about what might happen if they toyed with it. 

Cassandra laughs hollowly. “I’m afraid you can’t harm a sun god with a beam of light such as your weapon uses.”

Han wonders how she knows about the weapon and its workings. _This is one creepy lady,_ he thinks to himself. “If the guy harnesses that kind of power, I suppose not. But I wish I could. I don’t like what he did to you.”

Han mostly considers himself amoral. It’s hard to be in the smuggling business if you have too many principles. But he doesn’t like the idea of innocent young people getting pushed around by perverts. He’s accepted it as his weakness. Everyone has one or two. 

The woman is quiet for a time, and when she speaks again, her voice is softer, and filled with emotion. “You have no idea how welcome your words are to me, Han. For the rest of my short life, I will carry them as a comfort. That someone believed I was wronged.”

Han’s not comfortable with this outburst, but he isn’t able to brush it away with sarcasm either. He sits in silence, feeling awkward. 

“I promised to tell you how to get out of the dungeon,” she eventually says, and she gives him the details. “It’s best to wait until daybreak. Now, while you wait, do you wish to rest and preserve your strength, or will you keep me company on this night? It has been long since I’ve spoken to anyone…sympathetic.”

“I’m too keyed up to sleep, lady...Cassandra. Chatter away. I’m curious about you, and this place. Say, I’m not chained. May I come closer to you?”

Cassandra assents. They come together and explore each other’s faces, but then they simply settle next to each other, holding hands. Under other circumstances, Han might have wanted to do more, but he’s too keyed up for that, too. He just wants to feel connected to another human being. 

Cassandra talks about this place, her life, and her future. She’s utterly fatalistic, believing she has no choice but to live out the horrific tragedy of never being believed, being blamed for others’ wrongs, and eventually being murdered by her own family. 

It’s excruciating to Han, who believes people are in control of their own destinies, who rejects even the idea that some external Force affects people. But he’s compelled by her utter certainty, and finds himself unable to argue with her. 

And then, gradually, their conversation turns to humor. The shared experience of future-seeing brings it there. Han denies that there’s any supernatural gift that allows him to figure out what’s going to happen more often than not. He only runs patterns, looks back in his experience and knowledge, and intelligently guesses how things are likely to turn out. 

Maybe that’s how it is for Cassandra too, he muses as she talks. Maybe her dire predictions about her death are just morbid fantasies. But she certainly also has the same gift that he does, of seeing what’s coming in the short term. Han’s gift, which all of his friends mock him for (“oh, it’s Han having ‘bad feelings’ again”), and then avoid him afterward when it turns out he was right. 

They share their insights and the disbelief of those they try to warn.

“So then, Qi’ra said ‘hold my beer, I’m going to attack the swamp slug,’ and I said...”

Cassandra is laughing. Hesitantly at first, and then as the stories continue to be shared, with real mirth. 

“I told Hector, ‘don’t put young Astyanax in charge of the dogs tonight of all nights, when the dinner party involves an entire roast boar!’ But he said…”

They’re still laughing when light begins slowly seeping into the cell. 

Han can see Cassandra now. He’s never cared much about physical beauty (his usual companion is a freaking Wookiee, after all), but he feels his heart begin to crack as he looks at her face, gaining definition in the faint light. 

There’s so much knowledge there, and so much pain, and over it all a preternatural calmness. Is that what it’s like to be a “future-seer”? He hopes he never does end up as one. He’s not sure his sanity could survive it.

And then he realizes something else. Cassandra’s story of her future is so tragic, that he assumed the sadness on her face was for herself. Or perhaps for her world, because she could see destruction soon to come.

But it’s not. Not all. Some of it is for him. 

He opens his mouth to ask. Hesitates. 

What if she does really see the future, and tells him what sorrows she sees in his? How would he handle it?

_I have a bad feeling about this._

He closes his mouth again. 

Cassandra regards him, and seems to know what he was thinking. “Many of my people ask future-seers about their fate. It always tears them apart in the end. You are one of only a few who have not asked.” 

Soon there’s enough light. Han needs to go, before the city wakes up.

“Come with me, kid,” he urges. 

“I cannot. It is not my fate,” says Cassandra.

Han is surprised by the next words out of his mouth. He doesn’t think of himself as the rescuing type. 

“Defy your fate!” he cries. “If you come with me, none of that can ever happen! You can turn your life around, this horrible tragedy of a life that you fear, with one word. _Cassandra._ Just say yes. _Please.”_

Perhaps he doesn’t know himself as well as he thought.

Cassandra gazes long into his eyes, as if trying to find the answer to a question. Then she kisses him, her mouth lingering on his. 

“I cannot,” she says again, breaking the kiss.

He holds her face in his hands. “Why not?” he hisses.

“Because if I do, it sets a bigger tragedy in motion.” 

“What tragedy?”

“One in which you figure.”

“How so?”

“If I come with you, you won’t be in a certain…these words aren’t in my language…‘bar on Tattooine’…at the right time.”

“Tattooine? That’s at the ass-end of the Galaxy!” Han shouts, forgetting she won’t understand him. “I never go there.”

“Exactly. If I come with you, you won’t. If I don’t, you will.”

Han doesn’t believe her. But, tempted as he is, he’s not about to throw her over his shoulder and take her with him against his will. That wouldn’t be any better than what her tormenter Apollo did to her.

He pushes down a lump in his throat.

“Well, Princess. I hope you’re wrong about your destiny. And I’m too chicken to ask you about mine. I guess it’s farewell.” 

“I would tell you one thing.”

“Okay.”

“In several years, you will encounter a soldier for hire called Greedo, who has been sent to capture you. You must kill him before he tries to kill you.”

~~~

Han makes it back to his own galaxy. He tries to explain what happened to him, but no one believes him. And so as the years pass and he is involved in many smuggling adventures, his memories of the adventure fade. 

Until he walks into the Mos Eisley Cantina, just one night out of many he’s spent in there. He is surprised to see Kenobi there. And then he sees Greedo. 

Cassandra’s words come back to him. As Greedo threatens him with a gun and prattles about money, he wonders what happened to the sorrowful woman in the galaxy far, far away. She is one of so many passing encounters that have left him with questions that will never be answered. 

It makes him angry. But he feels better after pulling the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> There are various stories about Cassandra and Apollo. The one I'm going with is: Apollo gave her prophecy as a courting gift, and expected her to give herself in return. She refused. He was unable to rescind his gift, but he additionally cursed her never to be believed.


End file.
